Some may say the last thing you should watch when taking on a project like ours is the Tom Hanks and Shelley Long comedy about a couple being scammed into purchasing a very grand, very beautiful, very dilapidated old home. But not everything I do makes sense. Despite my lifelong dream of restoring an old home, The Money Pit has been—hands down—one of my favorite movies since it came out in 1986. Regardless of the challenges they face, literally one right after another, they come out on the other side with the dream home they didn’t even realize they wanted when they started. I had to make Cody watch it.

Not so sure he could see my vision… and possibly questioned every decision we’d ever made together in 25 years about thirty minutes into watching the film. Maybe because I chose to have him watch it right after our option period for the Tudor on Sixth ended and there was no going back? Maybe. But I do enjoy putting things into perspective. I mean, we may run into some challenges, but hopefully the bathtub won’t fall through the ceiling, the entire staircase won’t come crumbling down, and our wiring won’t catch fire all on day one. I laid out all the worst-case scenarios for him so anything we stumbled across would feel minor in comparison. 🙂 There is truly a method to my madness.

Spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie: what they did have (although it doesn’t appear so in the beginning) were contractors who eventually made the house into the immaculate home it was always meant to be. Even in the daylight. 🙂

It appears to take a VERY long time—”two weeks! two weeks! two weeks!”—and of course, there were many mishaps along the way, but Art and Brad Shirk and their very wild team did their thing.

It’s all about perspective, right? So who are our Shirk Brothers? From the beginning of this adventure, we had two guys in mind for the job. People we love, respect, enjoy being around, and who just do really good work—who recently started renovating homes. We reached out as soon as we knew she was ours, met with them, walked around, and did a lot of dreaming together. We felt confident we were meant to drag them along on this crazy ride with us, and I was so excited.

However, due to the nature of our construction loan requirements and the insane workload they’d already taken on (did I mention they do really good work?), it just didn’t work out. We were sad, but we trusted that God had someone else even more perfect for our project.

Martha (our realtor) saved the day yet again. Not only did one of her clients close on the perfect rental the same month we sold/bought—providing us with a place to live while we renovated—but he also happened to be a highly recommended home builder.

Enter our very own Art Shirk, also known as Mark Churchill. Here’s to hoping his crew isn’t quite so unruly! I don’t have a photo with Mark just yet, but I have a feeling there will be plenty of opportunities to expose the man wild enough to take on this project with us—because we have way more than “two weeks” of work ahead!

Until then, hopefully—unlike in The Money Pit—our permits will come in quickly, we won’t run into any raccoons in the kitchen, and Cody won’t get stuck in the floor. But likewise we will get our happy ending, with our marriage in tact and the home of our dreams.